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Enterprise ecosystems

Multiple enterprises interact with each other in marketplace environments. Increasingly, partnerships of supply chains compete against another partnerships of supply chains to gain market share. It may be somewhat arbitrary to distinguish the internal complexity of an organization from the relationships across the ecosystem. Generally when we talk about enterprise ecosystems we look at relationships among enterprises, not within enterprises

Elements:

enterprise type

business relationship

relationship types

Purpose:

The purpose of the ecosystem perspective is to understand the dynamics among enterprises.

Descriptive - Ecosystem views are descriptive of the supply chains and alliance networks that involve multiple enterprises. Metrics on flows within ecosystems can provide significant business value, if the data is accurate and timely.

Prescriptive - The very idea of enterprise ecosystems is a possible prescription. Based on Coase's Law there are those who claim that technology brings down transaction costs to where they are not a barrier to extreme specialization.

Predictive - The concept of business ecosystem can help us predict the emergence of complementary enterprises whenever there is a breakthrough that becomes commercialized. In the reverse case, when the central core of an industry declines, it predictably tends to take down its partners and complementors.